15 American Idol losers who found their own stardom

Ace Young (Season 5)

Yup, Diana DeGarmo married season five’s Ace Young! On the season 11 finale of American Idol, host Ryan Seacrest pointed the couple out in the crowd and asked them to come up on the stage. It didn’t take very long before we all knew what was about to happen: Ace proposed! But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, let’s go back to when Ace Young first graced our screens in 2006.

Young was raised in Boulder, Colorado, and began singing and writing his own songs by the age of 9. He moved to Los Angeles in 2001 to pursue his music career and found moderate success, opening for Brian McKnight and appearing on the UPN sitcom Half & Half. As the years went on and no record deal materialized, Young decided to audition for the biggest talent show in the country, and that’s when he got his break.

The 24-year-old sang Craig David’s “Walking Away” but the judges didn’t seem impressed. Paula interrupted him and asked him to try another song, so he opted for Westlife’s “Swear it Again” because it was a band that was originally signed by Simon Cowell in the UK. Randy thought he was one of the best they had seen so far, and Paula couldn’t help but point out how handsome he was. Simon was on the fence, but he still got through to Hollywood.

Young made it to the Top 7 before getting eliminated, and Taylor Hicks eventually won that season, with Katharine McPhee as the runner-up. Following Idol, Young got a Grammy nomination for co-writing Daughtry’s lead single “It’s Not Over” (along with fellow Idol loser Chris Daughtry).

Like his wife, he went on to make his Broadway debut, but for him it was in 2008’s Broadway revival of Grease, in which he played Kenickie. He then went on to join the show’s national tour as Danny Zuko and later appeared in the Broadway revival of Hair. Young and DeGarmo both appeared in the U.S. national tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat from 2014 to 2015.